(01-23-2025) Last Saturday I learned wustl has an area that its school shuttle covers (don’t know where to find it online). And I came across this one about why people (mainly students I assume) usually live.
其它也有不少地方是安全的,比如 Kirkwood, Webster Groves, Maryland Heights, 绝大部份的 west county, south county. West county 和south county 要稍远一些。
我自己的的经历
我从2000年秋天到圣路易斯。一开始在Bridgeton (机场✈️附近）住了一年。住在那里的主要原因是当时我刚到圣路易斯，我有一个朋友住在那个小区，那个公寓离我上班的地方（办公室）也挺近。This is the apartment. I think it’s generally okay to live there – besides 2 or 3 unpleasant things or exceptions I experienced. I can elaborate later if needed.
A year later, I moved to Park Forest Apartments, off River Des Peres and once the river flooded to the road, and I had to abandon my car on the roadside, and walked uphill. My car was damaged or anything. It was just a flash flood. It’s not perfect, but it’s better in general. Also, a bonus point, that place is about one mile (one way) walk to the famous Ted Drews: arguably the most famous ice cream shop on the route 66.
Graduate Students in WUSTL (Washington University in St Louis)
A little over 20 years ago (fall of 1999 and 2003), I helped my friends find apartment at University Square Apartments (could not find their website, this is just the google map). Both friends are graduate students originally from China. Recently I heard college students (some are likely master/graduate students) are staying at Clayton on the Park – which is a high-end/luxury apartment in downtown Clayton (right across the street from the Shaw Park). This seems also can be an indicator of the economy development of China in last 25 years.
This is for comparison purpose only. One in Overland (this apartment), this unit in a duplex in St. Ann, and one in Berkeley (near UMSL). Note I don’t recommend those. I visited those places because I was helping a neighbor looking for place to stay.
If you are shopping for houses in the St. Louis Area
Personally I like to get an quick overview if I am moving to a new place. Below are two excellent sources.
Reading Time: 5minutesHistory Wall at Ladue Horton Watkins High School
(Update 01-16-2024) It looks like Dr. Thompson (LMS Principal) just posted the relevant information for the 8th graders via the parent square (and her weekly Sunday email) – “LMS Weekly Memo: 1/15/24”. All 8th grader parents and guardians can see it either from the ParentSquare (web, Android app, iOS app) or via the email – look for the section titled “8th grade families”.
(Original) Cannot believe our old daughter is starting high school this fall. It seems not too long ago we sent her to the toddler’s program, the kindergarten, middle school, and now high school.
I have been to the high school quite a few times, both before pandemic and post pandemic. Before pandemic, I recall I went there for the elementary school night (the football game), and the basketball game shortly before pandemic shutdown, and post pandemic I went there more often for a bit over a year as I was the Parent District Council rep for Spoede School Association (our Spoede Elementary School PTO/PTA). Not to mention I have been to all the ‘Due Run for Education (Ladue Education Foundation) over the years since year 2017.
Curriculum night at the high school
It was good. I saw a lot of familiar faces. Due to covid/pandemic, and kids grew apart from elementary school days, I didn’t have a lot opportunities to see the familiar Spoede friends faces. I got to see the teachers and the staff at the high school too. And I stayed almost to the end, and talked to some of the teachers there.
I took some notes on the presentation. The notes are far from complete, but I think maybe helpful especially for those who could not or didn’t make it for some reason. One friend didn’t make it due to the misunderstanding of it will be held the next week (probably just glancing through one email/parent square post about the potential severe weather). I like to exchange notes with you all too 🙂
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Enjoy high school Pump the breaks – assistant principal Mike Tarpey – a kid only needs go to one college (for most kids; one can’t go to 5 or 10 Univ.) Dr. Rappof – associate principal for class of 2028 LinkCrew – a tool for transition to high school (new to me, research?) *Public speaking electives in addition to English 9 (other journalism focused course?) may be encourage my daughter take it? Social studies: at sophomore they can take AP history Encourage kids to self advocate (a slide)
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I took pictures of all the slides, and if anyone needs it let me know. Last but not least, I think the advice of “be yourself” and “advocate for yourself”.
Math: math is foundation for science and many other things. Try to get better at math. No need to be scare of it. No need to rush it either.
Science: Ladue has much more choices, in addition to the biology, chemistry and physics we had in China, Ladue has life science, biomedical science, earth science, environmental science, and so on. One thing we need to note though, is the Physics course has some pre-requisite for math.
Electives
Project Lead the Way: Project Lead The Way is an American nonprofit organization that develops STEM curriculum for use by US elementary, middle, and high schools (Wikipedia). This is the 2nd time I heard about PLTW, the 1st time I was at an LEF event.
Time is different, two different countries, and you bet the curriculum is different. But I am very proud of my education I received there. Overall I think I had a heavier workload in the middle school, compared to high school, due to special circumstances (we have a quite strict counselor in the middle school, high school counselors are more laidback). I expect the kids in the Ladue High School will have a heavier course load compared to the middle school. This is a general trend in the US, in addition to the competitive nature of many students here.
Other standout item is the money the school spent to renovate the language lab, and essentially I started my English listening comprehension training there (VoA, BBC and TOFEL?). The English teacher in high school is both nice and very good. I did mess up my Physics class to some extent: I didn’t always pay attention to the teachers, and sometimes I was doing something else. A kind of joke, once the teacher said, the grade of Physics shows someone’s IQ, it seems from there my grade started going downhill 🙂 But once I was very proud, in a less significant test (none the less, a simulation test) before the GaoKao, my Physics test got 95 or something, there were very few students got score over 60. I didn’t know why or how, but I think probably less a pressure played a role here. Or maybe my IQ was not that bad at all? 🙂
I attended a wonderful middle school (and high school) in China, in the middle of 1980s, Zhenhai Middle School. We do have 2 tracks from the 2nd year in our high school: note in China there are 3 years for high school. The two paths are: liberal arts, and STEM (文理分科 in Chinese). The “liberal arts” track students take Geography and History class, and the STEM kids take Physics, Chemistry and Biology classes, in addition to the core: Math, Chinese language, English and Political Science (there is some philosophy stuff which I think useful). Last but not least, I think the Math is slightly easier for the “liberal arts” track.
High school transitiontips: don’t work too hard or push your kids too hard, pump the breaks sometimes
I think everyone will have some transition. But the continuity plays a role: the kids went from the same middle school got an edge (same means same school district). In my case, my middle school and high school are the same. In the case of my 13 year old, it’s the same school district. She will have the same percussion teacher.
When I bought my condo back in 2005, I had two choices, one is the condo near Olive and Creve Coeur Mill road (Parkway school district). Another one is the Briarcliff Condo in the Ladue School District. I picked up the Briarcliff although it’s a bit more expensive.
The school district passed the Prop R in 2016, and finished the work in year 2018 (or 2019). This initiative and bond issue completedly changed the Ladue High School. In fact, the 1st time I was in the building for the PDC meeting at the library, I was impressed by the facility as well as by the students there (I was thinking wow, I hope my daughter will grow up like them: confident and polite).
For parents of the Ladue school bus riders: here is the SafeStop app (Android on Google Play, iOS, and the School Access Code is here). The app started working for me again (tracking and notifications, for the most part) on September 11, 2023 for the new school year.
I am on iPhone and I set up the bus routes (you can scroll down the web page to get to the route for each school ), added my kid (you may find your kid’s student ID either from the ParentSquare Android App, iOS App, website or the Infinite Campus), and added the bus to my kid, etc.
Here is a blog post that laid out all the common steps and screenshots, if needed.
If anyone needs help setting up the app, please let me know. I can do Zoom if needed . This app is not the most reliable app I personally used. But I also understand it gave some parents and caregivers peace of mind sometimes.
“No short cut; and I wish I could get those sleepless night back but I do understand no pain no gain in life sometimes.” -MXU April 2023
Everyone knows the prices for single-family houses (SFHs) in the US went up since the pandemic, and this is applicable to the SFHs in the Ladue School District (LSD) too. It may go up more than the national average. Luckily for us, we bought our starter home, a nice little ranch house, about 9 months before the pandemic shut down in March 2020, and we were grateful that we have the room to spread out, both for virtual school and our Work From Home (WFH) jobs. It’s not perfect, but it put us in a better position than the 2 bedroom condo we had earlier.
I lived in the LSD since the year 2005: I bought a condo across the street from the Schnucks/Monsanto in April 2005, at a price which is the market top at the time. Note that condo prices topped before the actual housing/financial crisis in 2007/2008. At the time I have basically two choices, and I think I still made the right choice looking back. The other choice was a 1st-floor condo near Creve Coeur Mills Road and Olive Road (Parkway School District, PSD): the condo was facing north which is not the best direction in terms of facing (it will be cold in winter and hot in summer). Plus the LSD is considered a notch above PSD (this is probably subjective opinion).
Since our 2nd daughter was born in the Summer of 2014, our 2 bedroom condo basically needs one more room, not in a hurry but in a time ticker bomb – as we believe eventually our younger daughter needs her own room. We didn’t put her in a separate room when she was an infant (same for our old daughter). When we hired a nanny when Sophia was a newborn, note it was customary to have some external helper in Chinese culture when there is a newborn in a family, the nanny had to sleep in the living room. My wife, myself, and Sophia were in one bedroom, Serenity the big sister took the other bedroom.
Fast forward a few years, I changed jobs in June 2015 and started working for the credit card co., hoping to make a few more bucks for the new house down payment. I recall probably in the summer of 2017 I joked with a few friends that the SFH is out of reach. Also, I don’t miss the sleep deprived nights and on calls while I worked for the credit card co: it’s basically a “sweatshop” that pays better than a normal sweatshop 🙁
In the Summer of 2018, we almost bought an SFH (Zillow link), and my wife had a second thoughts after realizing the house didn’t have a dishwasher. So we backed out after inspection while it was still in the cooling period. I really liked the backyard, but over the years I learned to listen to my wife. East or west, listening to the boss is the most important 🙂
Fast forward one more year, Sophia is also about to start attending Kindergarten at Spoede Elementary, and we were looking at houses more seriously: we even got a buyer agent who is grew up in/familiar with the area, and has a good supporting team. For us, Luckily everything worked out for our current house in June 2019. We saw the house listed, and my wife liked it, we did not really negotiate the price – we paid the asking price. Another small break for us is we had built a bit more savings in one year for down payment etc, since the summer of 2018. Now I think about it, we made decision pretty quick, I did not even do my neighborhood check: basically come at one morning, and come at one afternoon to make sure the neighbors are nice 🙂
I understand with the Pandemic and the SFHs price went up a lot. But we have zero control over things such as the pandemic, the economy, interest rates, mortgage rates, and so on. We do have control over ourselves, in terms of saving money, and being proactive. I heard a friend bought the house directly from a lady by knocking on the door, I have not confirmed but seems like a variable approach to me, as long as he/she asked it nicely. In another case, I heard friends did the SFH transaction privately. Both were done before pandemic, and the houses are not brand new. In recent years I did see more new houses come to market, after the investor buy/tear down/build much bigger 2 stories home etc. Another trend is the developers’ activities, such as I wrote it here earlier. Overall though, the supply is not catching up with the demand. One reason is sometimes the seller can afford to hold on to it, e.g., this century old house at the entrance of our neighborhood. I did a little research on the St. Louis county real estate website, and found out the owner likely lives in a mansion in Florida. The reason for my research was: I was thinking about investment property, and this one is close to where we live, and I walk by that house every day.
. This app is not the most reliable app I personally used. But I also understand it gave some parents and caregivers peace of mind sometimes.